I am Automaton 3: Shadow of the Automaton Read online

  “On the contrary,” said Kafka menacingly, “it is I who has brought them here.”

  “So that explains your dentally well-endowed friends.”

  “Those were a few, but there are many,” answered Kafka cryptically. “You might say they’re everywhere.”

  This was news to Peter. He wondered how many more were out there. “And your OIL friends are okay with your new crowd?”

  Kafka chortled at the question. “They have no choice. If they are true believers, they will join us. Those who lack faith will perish with the rest of you.”

  “You seem very confident in your chances. Invasion won’t be so easy.”

  Kafka laughed, a horrible flittering sound. “Not only will it be easy, but the military will help us achieve it.”

  More riddles. “How is that, exactly?”

  “You don’t think I’m going to reveal my master plan to you just like that, do you?”

  “I guess not,” replied Peter. “But it was worth a shot.” There was an uncomfortable pause. “You know I can’t beat you in a fight.”

  Kafka shrugged two bony shoulders. “Who says I want to fight? If I wanted you dead, you’d be dead already.”

  “So what do you want?”

  “Why not join the cause? General to general—”

  “Actually I’m a Major now,” Peter corrected.

  “Leader to leader,” Kafka said with an undercurrent of growing impatience. “Like Grant and Lee at the Appomattox Court House.”

  “And let me guess,” quipped Peter, “I’m supposed to be Lee. Bad example.”

  “Actually, unbeknownst to you, the example is quite fitting,” replied Kafka.

  “I’d have thought you’d be rather pissed at me for killing your little gypsy girlfriend in Monterosso,” pushed Peter.

  “Your heartbeat is accelerating,” said Kafka, the impatience escalating to an edge of anger in his voice. “You are trying to push me. Why?” Kafka cocked his head sideways, reaching out to the outside of the building with his senses. “You called for help.”

  Peter smiled at his brother as he heard the blades of the Black Hawk outside the building.

  “They can’t get to you in here,” said Kafka. “Your valiant effort is wasted.”

  “Who says I wanted them to get to me?” taunted Peter, and he threw his mutli-tasker at Kafka.

  Kafka caught it reflexively as Peter hit the ground. Suddenly, bolts of light crashed through the wall as the Black Hawk opened fire on Kafka.

  Peter commando crawled across the floor as bullets flew above him. He passed another stack of boxes that were being minced by the gunship hovering just outside the building.

  He made it to a doorway on the far side of the room, and he crawled through. He got to his feet and descended a flight of stairs, crossed a leather shop, and kicked open the front door.

  He stepped out onto the street and all manner of drunks, junkies, and assorted low lives were cheering the lightshow the Black Hawk was putting on for them up above, pounding the second floor with a barrage of bullets. Tijuana had become so lawless that gunfire was viewed as entertainment rather than something to hide from.

  Peter looked up, wondering when the gunfire would stop and the rope ladder would unfurl for him, but something out of the corner of his eye caught his attention. It was the two four-eyed, fanged men from before, minus the one crushed by the SUV. They were staring at Peter, hungry with vengeance, giving off a horrid clicking.

  “Oh, shit,” Peter said to himself, and he crossed the street, mingling with the crowd.

  The two fanged men followed him, meandering through the crowd, brandishing fierce canines. No one noticed. Everyone was looking up at the show above.

  Peter stepped onto the sidewalk and entered a building with a crowd of nighttime partiers. He walked down a narrow hallway that smelled like an armpit, pushing the people in front of him forward as he heard the thumping bass backbeat mixed in with Norteno music.

  He entered the club proper: a large dance floor with three bars, one on each side of the room (excluding the entrance), two cages, and a small stage containing half-nude dancing girls.

  Peter wiggled his way through the throng of dancers, making his way to the opposite end of the room. He looked back at the entrance and saw the two vampires enter the club, scanning the crowd for him. These bastards were persistent.

  He hoped he could lose them in the crowd, music, and flashing lights. Peter passed by one of the cages containing a buxom young woman wearing pasties. She was gyrating slowly to the music, her teeth, eyes, and fingernails glowing in the black light.

  Suddenly, one of the vamps caught sight of him and began to make a beeline for Peter, now shoving its way through the crowd. Peter looked down at his shirt and saw his blood illuminated in the black light. It was like a goddamned bull’s eye.

  Peter knelt down as if he was going to tie his shoelaces, and he pulled up his pant leg. He pulled a large knife out of a leather sheath. When he stood up, he felt a hand on his shoulder.

  He spun around, but a quick hand with a strong grip caught the knife. It was the other vamp. Peter felt a sharp pain in his ribs, and when he looked down, he realized the vamp injected him with something.

  Peter slapped the needle out of the vamp’s hand, but it was too late. He struggled to twist his hand and press the knife into the vampire as he was bumped by oblivious dancers around him, but the vampire was too strong.

  Suddenly, the sounds took on a frightening quality and the colors from the lights and glow sticks began to streak in slow motion all around him. Peter shook his head, but the pulsing music took on a horrible quality.

  Lights and faces flashed before his eyes, smiles turned to toothy grins, glassy eyes took on a nightmarish intensity, and Peter began to see demons interspersed in the crowd.

  As he recoiled in terror, trying desperately to convince himself that these were all hallucinations induced by whatever the vampire injected into him, he loosened his grip on the knife.

  The vampire snatched it out of Peter’s hand and slid it inside its shirt. It then backed away from Peter and disappeared into the crowd.

  Peter stood there dizzy, trying to keep his balance. He didn’t know why the vampire backed off, but he knew an opportunity when he saw one. He began to stumble his way through the crowd, falling into neighboring dancers.

  One girl smiled at him and kissed him on the cheek as he leaned on her momentarily for support. When he looked at her face, it was grotesquely contorted and demonic. She was trying to tell him something, but he couldn’t hear or understand her.

  He backed into a man, who promptly shoved him so hard he nearly fell into another girl. When he turned around, he saw a monster snarling at him, snapping its teeth.

  Was this real? He had vampires following him; he used to work with zombies…was this so crazy? It was like everyone in the club, upon taking notice of him, transformed into something else. When they looked at him, they dropped their human veneers and revealed something ugly and horrible underneath.

  He looked across the room and saw Kafka standing tall over the crowd, his four eyes luminous, all gazing at him. Peter began to back up, but there was a wall of dancers behind him pushing back. The club suddenly felt saturated with people, and it was standing room only.

  Kafka made his way through the crowd like a great wraith wading through humanity, undetected. Peter tried to push, but the crowd was dense and he hadn’t the coordination to slip in between the tightly packed clubbers.

  When he realized he had nowhere to go, a wave of panic washed over him, flooding his mind with terrible possibilities. He began to claw at people in desperation, trying to shout his way through the people.

  However, the music drowned him out and scandalous fiends glared back at him in disapproval, flicking forked tongues at him in protest.

  Peter turned around and Kafka was upon him, opening his mouth and licking venomous fangs. All Peter could do was look up at what was once his brot
her, a thing that now embodied hatred and evil and was fueled by vengeance.

  Kafka sunk his teeth into the side of Peter’s neck, and for a moment, the room had gone quiet and dark. The bite was excruciating, yet it blocked out the terror of the hallucinations—a brief moment of respite, cleansing through pain, redemption through contamination.

  Peter embraced his brother, accepting his fate at Carl’s hands. He had failed his little brother and was now prepared for his penance. He had been the sole survivor of too many missions, lost too many men. He had failed to protect his mother, and he lost her, too.

  It was his time.

  Kafka released Peter and pulled him close, whispering in his ear, “We are one, although we are many.”

  He released his grip on Peter, letting him fall to the floor, and he disappeared into the crowd.

  Peter lay on the floor, the horrible music faded into the background, white noise. The demon faces vanished, and Peter was only aware of faceless people crowded all around him in the sweltering room…

  …except for one face.

  While everyone was looking everywhere else, this one face was looking right at Peter. It would appear somewhere in the mix and then vanish, only to reappear somewhere else in the crowd.

  Peter was weak but forced himself to sit up, leaning on his right arm, and he strained his eyes to peer into the crowd. He saw the face again, this time closer. He rubbed his eyes frantically, struggling to make out the face.

  Then there it was, right in front of him, looking down at him. It was like he was looking in the mirror, because standing before him in dirty khakis and a golf shirt stained with sweat and blood was Peter, himself.

  This impossibility was more than his mind was able to handle, and he leaned back, closing his eyes, allowing himself to drift down the current of madness gently into sweet oblivion.

  Chapter 2

  University of Texas at Dallas

  University Village Apartments

  Building 58

  24:00 HRS

  Elicia Corti fired up what was to be her final podcast. After tonight, she was taking herself off the grid…or at least her illegitimate self.

  She still had projects to do for the mobile phone companies, debugging their operating systems, but it was a major step for a nineteen-year-old L33T hacker in modern society to drop off the grid. No more blogging and no more podcasts as Tronika. After tonight, she was closing her Tor account.

  In essence, she was killing off Tronika, but she saw it as ending on a high note. She had done some legendary cracking and had nothing to prove to anyone. One of her greatest trophies was posting a zombie apocalypse survival manual on the CDC website.

  She, or Tronika rather, had been invited into some pretty elite groups, but she had always declined. They were too Black Hat for her, even the vigilante groups. The Nation State had already dubbed her the Seditious Blogger, and she didn’t need any more agencies looking for her.

  Elicia decided to use her skills for good, and more importantly for profit, portscanning and updating operating systems and firmware. The money was very good and there was no risk of going to prison. A couple of close shaves with the authorities and the hacker life had begun to lose its luster.

  However, she was going to be on the grid as a regular, every day n00b. She still had to purchase her online digital textbooks and post her homework for her professors to grade online. She still had to pay her tuition, check her e-mail, and update her social networking sites.

  “Good evening, listeners. This is Texas Pirate Podcasting, the underground revolution watching the Man for you, John Q Citizen.”

  She never referred to herself as Tronika in her broadcasts, but her followers knew who she was.

  “As you know this will be my final broadcast via the internet. Things have been heating up around here, and your gracious host has to watch out for her own skin. If something were to happen to me, then who would look out for you? Who would risk life and limb in this fascist regime to bring you the truth?

  “I have been noticing…neighbors being carried off in handcuffs by the FBI, who have been very active as of late. With the Second Patriot Act in place, they are scouring the highways and byways of the digital realm, looking for terrorists and likely finding them where they want to.

  “Is this a legitimate use of tax payer dollars in the name of national security or a Federally-sponsored witch hunt? The jury is still out on that one, but what has recently come to my attention is not the Why but the How?

  “Just how are these Federal stooges conducting their surveillance? Phone tapping? Internet honeypots in chat forums posing as hyperlinks for those with a penchant for terrorism? Video cameras?

  “All of these are well-documented ways of detecting and ensnaring terrorists. So if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to worry about…right?

  “Well what if the government was using your cell phones, your mini-coms, your computer screens, and your television sets? Different story? There are advertising applications in Japan where screens can scan the retinas of passersby on the street and flash advertisements tailored to the individual.

  “Now that’s all private enterprise, corporations jockeying to snare your attention so that you will purchase their unique product. But what if the government was using this technology, or something similar, to read your retinas without your awareness or consent?

  “Still feel this is kosher? Hey, if you have nothing to hide, then what is there to worry about? Privacy? Intellectual property? There is a fine line between clandestine surveillance and espionage, and when the government engages in this sort of behavior it becomes tyranny.

  “So it is because of the dangers of tyranny that tonight’s broadcast will be my final one on the grid. For those of you who have been following my podcasts for the past year or so, I thank you.

  “You all must keep alert. Be aware of the technology that you are using and who might be viewing your behavior, or even worse…your thoughts. Although my podcasts are finished, I will never rest in my endeavor to seek out the truth. Somehow, someway, I will get the truth out to all who will listen in the hopes that someone in a high place will initiate policy change to protect our individual liberties.

  “These are frightening times, but in our fear we must not trade in our liberties for empty gestures that do nothing to protect us but give us baseless senses of security. The terrorists try to take away our freedom, our way of life. Let’s not hand over our freedoms to the government so the terrorists can’t have them.

  “And now I must say to all of my listeners good night. It has been a pleasure to serve you. God bless America, and God bless you all.”

  She turned off her microphone and shut down the podcast. She deleted her account with the podcast service, dismantled her proxy servers and proxy IP addresses to conceal her identity and location.

  This was no longer a joke. When she was a freshman, she started her podcasts as a social commentary on what was going on in the country, in the world. While philosophically for individual liberties and against big government, she found that her following always spiked when she went on rants and sometimes speculated beyond facts.

  Hell, it was entertainment, and if it spiked her following then she was game. That was what it felt like…a game. Night after night, she would pour out her opinions into cyberspace and watch her numbers go up and down. Soon her numbers were way up, and consistently so.

  The UTD Mercury, the university newspaper, praised her anonymous rants, calling her a courageous iconoclast. The administration panned her broadcasts, calling them the ravings of a confused, naïve girl who was vastly uninformed about politics, sociology, and the real world.

  Both reactions amused Elicia, but she stopped laughing when she saw fellow students being taken away, their computers, cell phones, mini-coms and such all confiscated. All right around the time when she was harping on the government spying on the citizenry using every digital interface under the sun.

  Elicia di
dn’t actually believe in any of this. At least not at first. It was more part of her entertainment portion of the show, not factual content. However, when she saw the apprehended students return, she knew the feds weren’t looking for these other students.

  They were looking for her.

  Apparently, she had touched a nerve with this particular thread of rants. The government didn’t like being accused of spying on the populace. While most would dismiss Elicia’s podcasts as juvenile, paranoid crap, she did garner quite a large following.

  It was time to quit while she was ahead.

  Her roommate Darcy staggered into the room drunk off her ass. “Hey, Elicia, you’re still up?”

  Elicia smiled at Darcy. Although she wasn’t into the drinking/drugging lifestyle (that was more her older sister Brittany’s ball of wax), she still liked Darcy. “It would appear so.”

  Darcy accidentally slammed the door behind her, dropped her purse on the floor, and plopped down in her bed smelling of cheap beer and cigarettes.

  “So what were you doing all of this time?” she slurred.

  “Typing up a paper for sociology.” Elicia noticed that Darcy’s makeup was smeared on her face.

  “You know,” said Darcy sitting up, “you’re always worrying about that shit. You should’ve come out. It’s finals week. I won’t see you over the summer.”

  Oh, this dance again. “Darcy, I would only cramp your style. I’m pretty much guy repellent.”

  Darcy looked deeply perturbed by this. “You shouldn’t say that about yourself.” She was wagging her finger. “You are a very pretty girl.”

  It was true. Elicia was pretty, in a natural, girl-next-door kind of way. Unlike her sister, whose main mission in life was to be glamorous 24/7 to land a husband, Elicia did not wear much, if any, makeup. She was thin and she didn’t dress like a total librarian, but she played down her looks, which always boggled both Brittany and Darcy.

  “Matt Brauer thinks you’re pretty.”

  This got Elicia’s attention. “He was there?”